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Monday, June 30, 2014

Garden Update June 30th, 2014

A friend gave me a new houseplant. In a jelly mold pan! I believe it is a non-edible type of purslane.

My herbs are overrunning the beds and I have been harvesting lots of dill, basil, parsley and oregano for sauces and zucchini cakes. Next on my list is to make a few big batches of pesto to freeze.

The bees are buzzing around my anise hyssop plant. Yay for friendly pollinators!

The cucumbers vines got attacked by a hungry deer. But it looks like they are trying to recover. Hopefully I will still get cucumbers. The deer also got my okra, peppers, and one of my sweet potato plants. Any suggestions for keeping the deer away?

Despite the deer, my zucchini and tomato plants are doing great!

Everything is a jumble of green.

TOMATOES!

The sweet potato plant that has survived so far. Hopefully the deer will stay away from this one.

A friend of mine gave me a stinging nettle cutting. It sat in my window for 2 weeks in a cup of water and finally sprouted roots. Then the roots went crazy and I planted it a week later. Now it is a month later and the nettle is booming!

It is flowering like crazy, but I want it to get bushier so I will try to cut back the flowers and then let it go to seed later in the year. I want as much as I can to grow in my yard! Stinging nettle is a perennial that is high in iron and many other minerals, it is great in infusions or to eat as a nutritious green. I am so excited to finally have some in my yard and I hope to cultivate it into a huge patch that I can harvest and eat from for many years to come.

Today I harvested 5 zucchinis, basil and some bee balm to make tea.

The big zucchinis weighed over 4 lbs! I made zucchini bread today with one of them. It made 9 cups of shredded zucchini which translated to 2 loaf pans and 18 muffins. Crazy. Now I have to figure out what I am going to do with the other one. ha!

1 comment:

It's beautiful!!! I can't believe you have 4 lb zucchini!!! Wow!! I haven't tried the recipe, but I have seen a zucchini chip recipe floating around Pinterest- maybe you could give it a try! You could probably feed all of your siblings with those zucchinis!!